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Monday, 15 May 2017

Traveling through hyperspace ain't like dusting crops, boy! Without precise calculations we could fly right through a star, or bounce too close to a supernova and that'd end your trip real quick, wouldn't it.

So, we've already played five game sessions of Star Wars 2020 with the basic space rules I posted previously. Those included travel times and fuel costs of hyperspace travel.

That's fine for when everything goes as planned. But things going as planned is boring. Now let's spice things up with some new rules inspired from Galaxy Guide 6: Tramp Freighters

CP2020 Skill Checks

Hyperdrive Mishaps

When making a jump, the PC should make a skill check for their Hyperdrive Tech skill i.e. 1d10+Tech+Hyperdrive Tech at the appropriate difficulty:

jumping on known hyperlanes within a sector, make an Easy roll

jumping between sectors on known hyperlanes, Average roll

under stress or preoccupied, bump up the roll by one level

jumping within the sector or between adjacent sectors with no known hyperlane, bump up the roll by one level

if they are trying to jump from within another ship while a Rathtar tries to devour their ship, make a Very Difficult roll

Monday, 1 May 2017

At the end of Session 5 of our Star Wars/Cyberpunk 2020 mashup, the party expressed the desire to follow up on the lead to Darakin University, on Dorcin, Dorkin System, Minos Cluster. This raises a simple question: how do you get from Airam Sector to Minos Cluster Sector?

With 40 years of Star Wars lore collected and organized on the Internet, one might assume this is an easy question to answer. But one would be wrong. I couldn't find any discussion or map that answers this question fully. There are a number of reasons for this:

Most of the star wars galaxy maps are at a high level, including only major Hyperlanes

Nav Computer at SW Combine calculates distances, but doesn't specify Hyperlanes at all

Airam Sector appears in the Tie Fighter series of Computer games, as well as the Knights of the Old Republic. Neither of these required players to jump between systems so details how to do so seem non-existent

Outer Rim

So now it's time to solve this problem the way any good DM solves problems: by making stuff up!

Galactic Map

From the Outer Rim Map, we see that

Minos connects to Elrood and the Rimma Trade Route at one end

Minos connects to Kathol at the other end

Airam isn't shown as connecting to anything, so we'll need to remedy that

So since Airam's Hinda System has strong political connections to Eriadu(Seswenna Sector), let's put a minor hyperlane there. Specifically:

Hinda(Airam)

Besberra(Cegul)

Rutan(Atravis)

Hydian Way to Seswenna

Minos Cluster

From Seswenna one can then take the Rimma Trade Route all the way to Minos. But that is a rather roundabout way to get from Airam to Minos. Is there a more direct route? For that matter, do the Ugor and Squib both use this route out of the sector for their galactic salvage operations? The Ugor might, being in the adjacent system, but for the Squib it seems a bit out of the way...

Minos Sector Map

Now let's have a look at 19th Level's Minos Cluster Map. I like this as a starting point because he already did a his homework on the Cluster. We see the Cluster has two connections

Elrood Sector

Kathol- an even remote system

So if there is a more direct route, it is probably going to be via Elrood or Tantra...

Elrood Sector

Elrood Map

Here's a map of Elrood Sector from Operation Elrood. As you can see, the Coyn Route(Rimma Trade Route) passes through the system. There seems to be a lot of asteroids and clouds in the system that would interfere with off-route Hyperspace travel.

As such, it is unlikely there would be a direct route to Airam Sector

A New Hope

So we seem to be stuck. There is only one way out of Airam Sector and it's surrounded by Ugor and Ex-Imperials and it's not really clear how the Squib run their salvage operation. Bummer...

Ah, but then I saw the first line in Wookiepedia describing the Squib Homeworld:

Skor II was a planet in the Squab system and the homeworld of the Squibs. It was located in the Outer Rim Territories just west of the Rimma Trade Route.

Rimma Trade Route

So it seems that Skor II is specifically known for it's proximity to Rimma. So now I can feel justified about inventing a new hyperlane between Airam and Minos. Specifically, we'll say that the Squib have a route from Squab/Skor System in Airam to Yelsain System in Minos Cluster. Problem solved!